About jnt13

Things I learned this week:
1- Having a show base its climax on the concept of 36 people walking is not the best way to hold a viewer’s attention.
2- Cops and firefighters should NOT be this bad at finding things.
3- The show really is The Amazing Race: Morocco . They really have to avoid this from happening week to week.
4- And, my early prediction for the Final 3 teams, based on who gets the most screen time – No Limits, Fab 3 and Football Players. AJ, Akbar and Erik are the early go to interviews for producers.

Well, maybe that last one is not something learned, but something guessed, but you’ll have to forgive me. I needed something to occupy the time before I fell asleep. That’s right, perhaps it was the lateness of my viewing on DVR, but I fell asleep during this action-adventure show. AND, amazingly, I misplaced my notes, thus making me have to watch the show again last night and re-take notes, and I fell asleep AGAIN!

Way to stumble on your momentum, EI. After a very promising first episode, this one kind of stunk. I am still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it will be good more than stink, but let’s be honest – this one wasn’t good.

Besides falling more and more into the trap of being an Amazing Race clone – down to the identical “previously” segment to start the show – it got boring. Now, the show had to do a previously bit, but it felt and sounded exactly like how Phil delivers it. It also needs to stop with the fake out drama before commercial breaks. It is one of my least favorite TAR edit tricks, and EI has copied that. You just knew that Blind Erik being left by himself would have no real consequences, right?

I understand that every challenge cannot be rappelling down a mountain, but realize what this episode required the teams to do – a LOT of walking, filling a water pot, picking out lamps, and a fairly timid kayaking challenge. And I mean a LOT of walking. Say what you will about the Amazing Race tendency to over-produce, edit and pipe in music, but it makes the wandering around portion of the show interesting.

And, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t kick off this new potential reality franchise with back-to-back episodes that include challenges focused on filling water bottles. What’s next?
Last week’s at least required some ingenuity from the first teams to arrive at the challenge, if not all of the others, but this one just required noticing that a bucket didn’t have holes. Amazingly, many teams did not notice that.

I give credit to the teams who took the wrong bucket who were able to improvise, whether it was with the Footballers’ shirts or the Country Boys’ mud spackling, it worked. However, it did seem to put the women at a disadvantage – something often seen in these kind of physical challenges – as they had to take more than one trip. And, might I add, just one trip to fill the pitcher? Couldn’t they have made it take several trips?

Now for the lamps. I can’t get on it too much because TAR has lots of these type of challenges, but it seemed rather easy. And what kind of abandoned ghost town Moroccan village did they find where there was nothing except random rooms filled with lamp covers? It was like a scene out of a Scooby Doo movie.

But what really got me was the 25-minute segment dedicated to walking. Teams left the lamp challenge and had to hike a couple of miles to the Old Bridge (sounds like something in The Shire. Or Thomas the Tank Engine) and the encampment, which was concealed within some stone walled fortress. That was the twist, other than following directions, the hidden camp. In the man-made structure. In the middle of nowhere. My question – if you were wandering two miles in search of a camp and old bridge, and suddenly you found in the wilderness an old bridge and a walled area next to it, wouldn’t you, I don’t know, check out what’s behind the wall?